Say ladies… have you met Dougie Jones? Doesn’t seem to talk too much these days, nor does he have a whole lot of independent thoughts all of a sudden, but he’s lost a little weight and if the green of his blazer doesn’t get the motor humming then the green inside his duffel bag ought to.

Episodes three and four focussed largely on the variations of Dale Cooper. We pick it up with Coops, the real one, falling through space until he finds himself in a strange… jeezus, dimension? You can’t really describe this stuff. It’s all purple tinged and the picture looks distorted and the brightness has been messed with and the movement is all weird with frames missing. In a way, the only thing it really compares with is Eraserhead. Shout out to David Lynch.

There’s a woman without a face. It might be meant as Josie Packard since she appears to be of Chinese heritage and roughly the right age (it’s not the same actress though). She keeps him away from this strange-ass vent looking safe thing and guides him up onto the roof… which is in outer space. And Garland Briggs’ face floats by all wispy and disembodied. The face says two words: “Blue Rose”.

Fake Josie’s wall contraption was numbered ‘15’. Coops then goes back inside and finds a middle aged Ronnette Pulaski (remember her? She was with Laura Palmer when she died), who lets him take a peek at wall contraption ‘3’. Dunno what significance those numbers are but nothing’s there accidentally.

So Coops gets sucked through the wall thing, DoppelCoops crashes his car and chunders up a whole lot of garmonbozia or something and then Dougie appears, fresh from a stint with his favourite financially available mistress and he gets sick and chunders up the same lumps before he gets sucked through the wall socket and the fun begins. Dougie is briefly in the Black Lodge where MIKE tells him: “Someone manufactured you for a purpose but now I think that’s been fulfilled.” Dougie turns into a little golden ball-bearing and bingo. Coops is out of the Lodge but after 25 years he remembers bloody nothing. Pretty much a vegetable at this stage. Yup, 25 years in limbo will do that to ya.

No secret there, DoppelCoop used Dougie as a decoy so he didn’t have to go back to the Lodge. Now either Cooper or DoppelCoop must die, etc. Usual stuff, it’s more a matter of whether DoppelCoop had help creating Dougie and whether that help might have come from a certain Phillip Jeffries.

There are some cringey scenes that follow where they had to make this work in the real world. Anyone who tries to interact with DougieCoop is just talking to a brick wall and that’s not the easiest stuff to watch, luckily he’s dispatched in a casino where little Black Lodge visions tell him which machines are about to hit jackpots. Helllooooo! By the fourth episode he’s reunited with Dougie’s wife, Naomi Watts (which is awesome because she’s awesome although there’s not a lot to do there for her yet). We learn that Dougie owes someone a lot of money and that’s probably why Coops was nearly shot at leaving the hooker’s house. And Dougie and Naomi have a kid who is strangely ambivalent to his borderline braindead daddy. Oh hell and Dougie was wearing the Owl Cave ring!

Five hundred words is long enough, it’s time to talk Wally Brando. Now, Twin Peaks has always had that irreverent Midwestern charm to it. It’s never shied away from being weird and the first two episodes of the 2017 edition probably took that deeper, darker and further than ever. So far the funny stuff has come as deliberate comic relief though. Never has that been more evident than the extended scene that introduced Wally Brando, played by Michael Cera, the son of Andy and Lucy. Or… possibly of Dick and Lucy, that’s still hard to tell. The scene is insane and not in the way we’re slowly getting used to. It’s so slow, so awkward, so fingernails-on-the-chalkboard. For the first few minutes it feels like the biggest mistake of the rebooted series so far (only the rebooted one though, nothing they do can be worse than Super Nadine or Billy Freakin’ Zane).

Wally Brando shares a birthday with Marlon Brando (that was established before we ever met him – Andy wanted to call him Marlon but they compromised). Technically that’s impossible given the dates of the first series but whatever. He doesn’t only share a name though, he dresses and talks exactly like Brando in The Wild Ones (1953). Clearly there’s a commentary on nostalgia going on there – the original run was hugely indebted to that 50s Americana stuff. But it’s sooooo odd. Except… it’s also absolutely laugh out loud hilarious. Wally Brando has proved a divisive character so far but, hey, I’m all on board. The slight lisp is the icing on the cake.

Bowie Interlude: Okay, okay, okay. I’m gonna say all of this because it’s eating me up inside. Phillip Jeffries, the agent played by David Bowie in the film, has really been getting a lot of focus lately. Chatter from DoppelCoop in the first episode, plenty more now in a longer conversation between Gordon and Albert. For a character that isn’t gonna be appearing in the show they’re really rolling out the carpet, right? Unless… could he? Could he really?

No, surely not. It’s already been confirmed by the dude who plays Andy that Bowie was supposed to come in for filming but couldn’t make it and then he obviously died soon after. That suggests that Lynch and Frost definitely had a part for him and probably then had to write and film around the fact that he wouldn’t be able to reprise – hence so many references left in there for a character that, at least in my initial understanding, they seemed to suggest was dead off-screen in that phone call DoppelCoop made at the motel.

Although… Log Lady died before Bowie and she was able to (just) film her scenes. Judging by some stuff Naomi Watts has said on late-night TV appearances about how secretive the scripts were, you never know. She reckons you only got the scenes you were in and even then only the stuff that’s immediately relevant. If your character entered a scene midway through your script was blacked out up until you entered the shot. If Bowie, who was still working up until a few days before he passed (with his musical play Lazarus), had been well enough to reschedule then it’s possible only a handful of people on the planet, all with non-disclosure agreements no doubt, would even know. I don’t wanna believe it… but I don’t wanna rule it out either. If he does show up, even for a second, it’ll be the greatest moment in the history of television. Just saying.

Back to regularly scheduled programming now, Bobby Briggs is working for the coppers now and he has a little cry when he sees Laura Palmer’s photo. Poor lad, he always did know how to cry on demand. Didn’t see a wedding ring on his finger so dunno if he and Shelly are still a pair (oh damn, whatever happened to Leo!). When he cries they even play the old Laura theme too, which plays into my theory that this show will get closer to its old conventions as it settles into the series. Just had to freak everyone out first, get them all discomforted. Mission, ahem, achieved.

The Sherriff Truman thing. As we’ve already learned, there are two of them. One’s sick and one’s fishing. Well one returns from fishing and it ain’t the one we know – it’s his brother as played by Robert Forster (the original casting of Harry, funnily enough). So Harry’s the sick one – Wally is in town “to pay his respects” to his godfather (another Brando reference). Forster’s cooler than Harry anyway. Tougher too, which is gonna help based on where we’re going now. Back in season two when Josie turned into a doorknob and Harry had his mental breakdown? Hahaha, oh man. Yikes.

Quick Recap on Old Mates:

• Agent Cooper – Making Forrest Gump look like Albert Einstein at the moment.
• Hawk, Andy & Lucy – All doing cop stuff, still tryna figure out Log Lady’s words.
• Gordon Cole & Albert Rosenfeld – FBI stuff and looking for Coops.
• Bobby Briggs – He’s also a cop now!
• Dr Jacoby – Might not be a doctor anymore but he’s painting shovels (whatever that means).
• Denise Bryson – Taking care of federal business.

And that’s it for these two episodes, ignoring the dream people and all that. Cole’s still deaf, Albert’s simmered down a little though. Man, it’s tough but great seeing Miguel Ferrer out there in what must’ve been one of the last things he filmed. Jacoby pops up painting his shovels gold, the ones he got delivered in the first episode and yeah. Let that one simmer too.

As for Denise, she’s now so far up the food chain at the FBI that it’s a wonder Trump hasn’t fired her yet. That scene was entirely unnecessary other than reintroducing an old favourite and allowing Lynch to meta-admit that he cast Chrysta Bell as Agent Tammy pretty much because she’s pretty – and also a musical prodigy of his. I mean, as long as he’s honest, right?

The only thing that remains to be said is that the Blue Rose thing refers to Cole’s code words for the UFO/Black Lodge stuff Major Briggs was researching back in the day and that they have a good chat about it at the very end. David Bowie might have been working with DoppelCoop, they don’t know about DoppelCoop but they meet him and know straight away that something’s off. Lots of talking about stuff that feels like we’ll be learning about soon, most of which only really led me into piecing together by Bowie Lives theory. Look, I don’t fully believe it either but right now there’s no hard evidence that rules it out. And if it does happen… *shivers*.

Either way, we’re starting to return to some kind of familiar Twin Peaks after a two-part premiere that didn’t really bear any resemblance at all other than some names, some faces and the Black Lodge. Unfortunately the dickheads put the third and fourth eps up for streaming so gotta wait another week to see any more now – given the divergence at the start it makes sense that this is where they want people to settle in, but oh well.

Now all we need is Cooper to wake up because that Dougie jive is starting to get bloody annoying, if I’m being honest. There was a hint, just a hint, that he might have come to with that first sip of steaming coffee… either that or the brew was too hot and he burned his mouth. We’ll find out soon enough.

Argh and who is it that they know where she drinks, Albert and Gordon? Gotta be Audrey right? Where the hell is Audrey?

Musical Epilogues…

Episode 3 – The Cactus Blossoms

Episode 4 – Au Revoir Simone

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